Hello again, from Los Angeles this week, where I’m posted up in the Crypto.com Arena press room fighting the urge to make (another) trip to the ice cream station. When are teams going to swap out these valve-clogging monsters for smoothie bars? Where’s the Professional Basketball Writers Association when you need them?
Pod Alert: Rachel Nichols is back this week to dive into more fallout from the Pelicans’ decision to can head coach Willie Green, the Grizzlies’ dwindling options with Ja Morant and if Toronto has found something sustainable during this recent win streak. As always subscribe here, here and here.
Let’s get it started …
There is life in the North
At least that’s what winning four straight and eight of the last nine looks like. In October, the Toronto Raptors looked lifeless. They were 1–4 and seemingly barreling toward another sub.-500 season. A few weeks later the Raps are 9–5 and in the thick of the Eastern Conference playoff race.
So what’s changed? The offense, for starters. Toronto plays fast (nearly a quarter of the Raptors’ possessions are transition, per NBA.com) and efficiently (49.8% shooting, third best). Scottie Barnes’s efficiency numbers are up while Brandon Ingram is the half-court scoring option the Raps have lacked since the Kawhi Leonard days. Rookie Collin Murray-Boyles has been solid, while Sandro Mamukelashvili—a sweet shooting 6' 11" big connecting on 45% of his threes—has pushed his way into the conversation for Most Improved Player.
Is it sustainable? It depends on the defense. Toronto has been good on that end (10th in defensive efficiency) but you have to squint to find plus defenders. Barnes is excellent—those Scottie Pippen comps could return quickly—but the combination of Ingram, Immanuel Quickley and RJ Barrett can be shaky. The Raptors have good depth (Jamal Shead, Gradey Dick), but depth is less valuable in the postseason. Still, it’s been a long time since Toronto was relevant. Fun to see that fan base come to life.
Does the NBA have a soft tissue injury problem?
Steve Kerr thinks so. The Warriors coach used his pregame media availability on Tuesday to voice concern about the run of lower body strains players have been collecting. Some of the NBA’s biggest stars (Giannis Antetokounmpo, Victor Wembanyama, Anthony Davis) are on the shelf with so-called soft tissue injuries. And Kerr believes he knows why.
“[The Warriors’ medical staff] believes that the wear and tear, the speed, the pace, the mileage is factoring into these injuries,” Kerr said. “Players are running faster and further [than] before. We’re trying to do the best we can, but we basically have a game every other night. It’s not an easy thing to do.”
According to ESPN, the NBA is playing at its fastest average collective pace since the 1988–89 season. Players have also combined to travel 34.3 miles per game this season at an average speed of 4.43 mph, the longest average distance and fastest average speed since player tracking began in 2013–14.
On Tuesday, I put the question to Jazz coach Will Hardy. Hardy passed on offering any medical opinions but agreed with Kerr that the pace of play had picked up at an astonishing rate.
“The tempo of the game is quick,” Hardy said. “I mean even this year, I think there’s [24] teams in the NBA that are averaging a hundred possessions a game. Last year there were [13], so you’re seeing an uptick in the pace of the game it seems like over the last couple of years.”
Gripes about the schedule are nothing new. And to the NBA’s credit, it has efforted to reduce the wear and tear on players’ bodies via reductions in back-to-backs and three-games-in-four-night stretches. League officials regularly tout the lengths the NBA has gone to protect players. Still, 82 games over six months is a lot to play at the current breakneck pace. The only real solution is to reduce the number of games. And we all know how that conversation goes.
The Jazz love Kevin Love
In the aftermath of Love getting shipped to Utah last summer—salary filler as part of a three-team trade with Miami and the L.A. Clippers that effectively swapped Norman Powell for John Collins—it was quickly assumed that Love would be bought out. Love, though, has stuck around in Utah, providing needed frontcourt help on a team depleted in the aftermath of Walker Kessler’s season-ending injury and even more value in the locker room.
Hardy said when he met with Love after the trade he was blunt. “I said I don’t know what the minutes are going to look like,” said Hardy. “But I can promise you a role.” With Kessler out, that role has been more substantive, with Love, 37, chipping in 14 minutes per game. Hardy noted that Love has proven to be a valuable sounding board for him, too.
“I’ve said to Kevin, I’ve said to our team, I’m a young head coach, I’m not a finished product either,” said Hardy. “I could still learn and get better. I make mistakes. And Kevin has played for a lot of great coaches. He’s been in a lot of big moments and so I bounce things off him in different moments as well.”
Don’t blame the ball boys
As a former ball boy who enjoyed an eight-year run in Celtics sweats, I feel duty bound to weigh in on what happened in the fourth quarter of the Jazz-Bulls game on Sunday. To recap: With under six minutes to play and Utah clinging to a three-point lead, Jazz forward Brice Sensabaugh was whistled for a foul on Chicago’s Kevin Huerter. After the contact, Huerter tumbled near center court. Quickly, two ball boys ran out with mops to dry the floor. ≠
Totally normal, right? Not according to referee Marc Davis, who, interpreting the mop kids to be a delay tactic by the Jazz to buy time for a review, whistled Utah for a delay of game. It being the Jazz’s second delay, the result was a technical foul and a free throw that whittled the Utah lead down to two. Hardy, understandably, lost it. In an interview with a pool reporter after the game, Davis said team attendants should be “beckoned” onto the court by an official.
I can’t begin to tell you how absurd that is. First, the idea that ball kids—most of whom are teenagers or 20-somethings—are colluding with teams to buy time for replay reviews is bonkers. I did the job. Granted, I wasn’t a deep thinker in those days—some would argue I’m still not—but I feel confident that any team attendant rushing to clean up a wet spot is doing it because there is a wet spot. The gig didn’t come with a ton of pressure but if a player slipped on your end of the floor, someone was going to give you an earful about it. And if a kid has to be beckoned onto the floor by a referee after every fall, every playing surface will be a swamp.
Utah won the game in double overtime, so no harm, no foul. My guess is Davis forgot the Jazz already had a delay of game warning; the first came before the game, when Keyonte George didn’t have his jersey on. No referee wants to impact the scoring of a close game. Still, maybe we can come off this idea that ball boys could be double agents.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Mannix’s NBA Notebook: Raptors’ Offensive Breakout, NBA’s Soft Tissue Issues.
